Current research directions in software engineering for parallel and distributed systems

Abstract

In March 1996, the First IFIP Workshop on Software Engineering for Parallel and Distributed Systems was held in Berlin, Germany. The two day workshop was co-sponsored by the German Computer Society GI (Gesellschaft fur Informatik), and organised in association with the International Software Engineering Conference--- ICSE 18.The aim of the workshop was to provide a forum for exchange of information and publication of the latest technological and theoretical advances in software engineering for parallel and distributed systems. Our previous experience of running short workshop on this topic in Aachen, Germany (1993), Como, Italy (1994) and Hawaii, USA (1995) had indicated that there was a growing need for this specialized event [1], [2], [3]. The International Programme Committee was formed from a group of experts in different countries and application areas, all of whom were enthusiastic to explore and publicize contemporary research in parallel and distributed software engineering.In this report we discuss the rationale for the workshop, detail its outcomes and look at some of the research issues that it highlighted. The proceedings of the workshop are published by Chapman and Hall [4], and full information is available on the PDSE Web page: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~prc/PDSE.html